


street lights, glowin’.

by commonemergency



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Family Dynamics, Fluff, M/M, charlie is mentioned - Freeform, colin is here, everything is fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 08:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12602932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: Dan and Phil go to the places that mean something to Dan in Wokingham.





	street lights, glowin’.

**Author's Note:**

> so i started this not sure where it was going, and i still don’t know what exactly this is.
> 
> i grew up in a small town, a lot of conservatives and not much else. there was a guy that i knew, but it was a friend of a friend kind of thing and he was talked about a lot in my town and he passed away and i just remembered today was the anniversary and he was amazing so there’s a conversation in here that deals with that very lightly. otherwise this isn’t meant to be angsty. i just kind of wanted to write it.
> 
> this is set sometime when they were writing tabinof.

“We never really went to the places that mean a lot to me here,” Dan and Phil are sitting on Dan’s small bed in his old childhood room. It had rained for hours, but now all that was left was the wet earth and the smell. The sky was gray and people’s lights down his street were turning on. Wokingham would be a quiet town soon.

“Don’t think so. We stayed here a lot,” Phil says, looking out the window, remembering all the times that they had taken their laptops to the window to show what the weather was like on their side of England. Being in Dan’s room feels kind of weird, like he’s stepping back in time for a moment, but when he looks over at Dan he’s taller, and different in a lot of ways, but also the same. 

“Would you want to go?” Dan has his hands placed on Phil’s knee, fingers tapping against it which cause Phil to squirm a little because he’s ticklish.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Phil gets up and puts pants on and then a warm jacket. 

“We can take Colin,” Dan says, leaving his phone on the charger and Phil does the same. 

It was nice to unplug for a while, they sort of had to – the internet was never the best out here but over the years it’s like it had gotten worse. They walk down the stairs and the floors creak beneath them, familiarity is all around Dan, it sticks to him like the sweater on his body, and it should feel comforting but it wasn’t all the time. Things were changing, slowly, and surely. 

Colin is sitting by his mum’s feet. His parents are in the living room reading together and he has to admire it for a second. 

“Mind if we take Colin for a walk?” Dan’s voice is small, and surprisingly timid.  
“Sure, love,” his mother looks up from her book with a small smile and nods towards the leash hanging on the coat hanger. 

“Colin, want to go for a walk?” Dan’s voice goes a little higher, the dog wags its tail excitedly, quickly getting up from his mum’s feet and running towards Dan, he’s walking in a small circle and barks just a little out of excitement. Dan bends down and pats his head and hooks the leash and Phil follows Dan out the door. 

It’s getting dark, but Dan enjoys this time of night. Whenever there’s too much going on in his head he goes for walks but back home, in London, and he admires the way that the lights start to turn on, and people are walking home from work or a dinner out, life doesn’t really stop but keeps moving and it’s sort of comforting to him. In places like Wokingham it’s like time stops because the people don’t really have a reason to go out but spend it at home with family. 

“So where are we going?” Phil follows the superstitious “rules” that his friends had told him as a kid, never step on a crack, he walks over them, and he can’t help but kick rocks in his path, it excites Colin for a second but then he’s quickly distracted again by the smells of people’s bushes and the trash that was left behind. 

“The park,” there’s a park that’s not too far from Dan’s house, it was the one that he had always gone to with his grandmum when she would come over and watch him. Dan had referenced the park many times to Phil but never actually taken him to it. 

It takes them a while to get there because of the dog, but they don’t mind it because Colin is too cute to be mad at. 

“So what’s the importance?” Phil looks at Dan who seems to be lost in thought before a small smile falls on his face. 

“When I wanted to run away from my parents, because they had said something I didn’t agree with, I’d come here with my stuffed bear and sit on the play structure. And then my mum would always find me here and wait for me to finish my pity party.” He laughs slightly and shakes his head. “I also shared a kiss with a girl I really liked there,” 

Phil smiles with Dan and looks behind him, there’s no one there, it’s compulsory to look, to see if anyone is watching before he laces his hands with Dan’s. Colin sniffs around them and it’s an almost picture perfect moment. They’re here to work on their book, ask his mum a few questions, say hello to his grandmum for her birthday, and tell his family that he’s seeing a therapist. It took a year and Dan hadn’t found the right therapist so he had put it off until he found the one. It’s a lot, and he knew that if he did it over the phone it wouldn’t feel right. Their initial reaction to it was silence before his mum had tried to go into this philosophical rant that Dan appreciated but didn’t make much sense. 

Phil just said to give them time. 

It’s a lot to process on top of the book, on top of the other projects they’re doing, he gets it.

“Shall we move on?” Dan turns his head to look at Phil and he shrugs. 

“Sure.” 

Dan lets go of Phil’s hand and gives the leash to Phil who gleefully takes the dog, Colin is a very easy to dog to love and take on a walk. He wishes he wasn’t so deprived of dogs as a child, and he can’t wait until he can get one of his own. Colin is good enough though. They don’t say anything, there’s comfort in the silence, and the only noise being made is from the houses they pass with loud families, or the cars that hum passed them, or the nightwalkers with their own dog. Phil spends a lot of time thinking about their future. Where they’ll be in the next couple of years, where they’ll go and what they’ll see. 

He thinks about the thought of them settling down eventually, he tries not to think about that too much because it scares him, but when they’re surrounded by houses of people who sort of have it together, and walking a dog that isn’t his with his boyfriend, it’s hard not to think about. He wonders if the couple that passed by them thinks that they’re a couple, and he wonders if they think this is their daily walk too. It’s kind of fun for Phil to pretend that they do this all the time, that this is their life. He never hated the life that he has now, there were things that could be improved but he liked London and he liked having friends close by, but this was just nice too and he thinks that Dan feels that way regardless of his history with this town. 

Dan slows down and they come across a cemetery, there’s a small church, and one big tree in the front and a bench underneath. It’s dedicated to someone that’s passed from what Phil could make out. They can’t go in, the gates closed but the wall surrounding the cemetery is short enough that they could climb over but they won’t. From what Phil can see is that it’s a beautiful cemetery, most are. 

“Do you know anyone buried here?” Phil wonders curiously. 

There’s still a light on in the church. 

“A couple of people. Not anyone I was close to. Our family had this big argument about where to bury my uncle and this was one of the options but it didn’t end up happening…. But uh, a couple years ago I had read about a kid from my year eleven that had come out as gay on facebook, people didn’t really like him here, not sure if it was because he was gay or because he was a prick- I didn’t know him well enough to determine, but he did some remarkable things when he was alive that I read from the obituary, he organized a club for the LGBT so he couldn’t have been that bad. He died from a drunk driver, his parents had him buried here, and I think about him a lot. I don’t really know why? I guess I’m glad that someone from Wokingham was brave enough to publicly come out given the rep that most small towns have when it comes to things that are… different.” 

Phil had listened, and nodded his head and placed a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “I think it’s interesting how we both have these people in our lives that we don’t know personally but sort of… paved the way for us just by them and their… queerness, I guess.” For Phil it was a lot of things, not so much the people he had grown up with, but it was tv shows, and then when he had gone to university it was experience, and youtube, and Charlie. 

Colin barks at something in the distance and Phil leans down to pat his head and looks up at Dan again and they’re both thinking that maybe it’s time to go home. 

On the way back Dan starts talking about a house because of the person that lives in it, it’s normally always someone he went to school with or someone he met through his grandmum’s church, and there’s always a story behind it, something that’s impacted Dan and he won’t write about it in the book, maybe someday, but not this one. There are things he wants to talk about, but it doesn’t feel right but someday it may be. Phil can understand that. 

“When we buy our own house we should get a dog like Colin,” Phil says as they make their way up to Dan’s doorstep. He doesn’t open the door but stares at Phil for a long moment and smiles and nods. 

“I think so too.” He grabs Phil’s face with his hands and leans in to kiss him on the lips. Colin scratches at the door and Dan laughs against his lips and eventually pulls away to open the door. Dan’s parents are gone to bed but they’ve left the light on. Colin gets taken off his leash and goes upstairs to his parents bedroom and Dan grabs Phil by the hand and they walk up the stairs together. They won’t be going to sleep anytime soon, but he feels better about the visit, it’s not as scary anymore now that his family knows about the things in Dan’s life. He can rest easy tonight.

“What are we doing?” Phil asks. 

“I don’t know yet. I just want to cuddle you in my old room.” 

So they do. And it’s good.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated! 
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: @nihilismdan


End file.
